Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday August 20, 2012 @03:01AM
from the get-your-science dept.

ianare writes "There has been a continued increase in the number of students taking A-level science and maths subjects. Physics has been especially popular. A growing fascination with science and teacher support schemes seem to be improving the teaching of maths and physics in UK state schools. From the article: 'There is evidence that two teacher support schemes funded by the Department for Education and run by the Institute of Physics and Mathematics in Education and Industry are beginning to make a big difference.
The IOP runs a network in England designed to help science teachers teach physics, called the Stimulating Physics Network. The MEI has a similar scheme called the Further Mathematics Support Programme. There is compelling evidence that much of the rise in the numbers of A-level students comes from schools participating in the scheme.'"

Yes, most likely. There's a huge demand for physics and maths based degrees in the UK. There's a reasonable chance of getting a job in teaching or research, but the real boom area is financial services. Basically, if you can model money with PDEs you'll find a job (although I've known several people drop out of that field because of ethical issues). Physics is probably one of the most adaptable degree subjects, and certainly more employable than being one of the huge number of English Lit / Politics / Philosophy / Economics graduates.

100% agreed. Regardless of actual role (outside EXTREMELY specialised fields and even then experience wins over degree), when hiring, a Maths/Science degree almost guarantees an interview (outside financial services where jobs are currently few and far between, though historically it was almost a pre-requesite).

The unemployment problem isn't to do with lack of jobs, there are plenty available, just not that many for "fluffy" degree grads.

It is probably worth pointing out A-levels are courses offered to 16 -19 year olds (in general and in a school) after the first round of qualifications at 16vand are a pre-requisite to studying at Degree Level, The performance at A-level is what will determine which courses and University these students will be offered. Note there are alternatives to A-levels which tend to be offered at colleges rather than schools.

I get the impression that people think these students are already studying Maths and Science

Also because so many students do physics A-level universities often assume that most students will have it.

I remember some of my first year courses in electronic systems engineering being tough because I hadn't done physics at A-level and while they did just about cover everything needed they went through it very quickly.

It's slightly different in Scotland - you generally do five Highers, which gives you a nice wide range (in my case, Maths, English, Physics, Chemistry and History), this is your basic tertiary entrance exam. You then have a final year when you can either catch up on subjects you didn't do well in, or specialise in a smaller number of subjects at what is roughly 1st year Uni level.

In my case, because I wanted to know more about physics. Ideally I'd have gone on to work on one of the big telescopes in Hawaii, or possibly the Big Secret Hanger in Area 51, but I know when I was going into it that I may work in a field outside physics. Even these days, 15 years later, I still "do physics" on a regular basis, from fixing things to envelope calculations. The reason I went for physics in the first place were, in this order:

Actually my easy comment gave " History's Coming To (1059484)" and "wisdom_brewing (557753)" a forum to add some interesting stuff. I particularly liked History's Coming To's post about Scottish education being different with their " five Highers". Scottish education had been better than the English system for a few hundred years and they produced some of the worlds best in many fields.
Lots of people read my precious comment and many gave up study on the spot.

I regret not doing more mathematics the first time round at A level, but there are problems to be addressed. I did turn my degree ("major", as Americans seem to call it) toward mathematics, and for preparatory work ended up doing another math A-level via private study, for which I received the top % in the country for that exam board. But all I really did was cram the study books published by the same company which produced the exams.

At a ceremony thing, following a long discussion with some of the staff at the board, I was immediately offered a trial position. I stupidly didn't take it. Well, I know at the time I was recovering from an illness which had just appeared and wasn't really thinking straight about what I could do long term. But I would like to have played at least some part in turning it more from a "learn for the test" thing into a "learn problem-solving" thing.

I think there's probably quite a simple explanation for this. The amount of debt that students in England and Wales will likely need to take on (barring rich parents) to pay for a degree has risen significantly from this year (not quite at US levels yet, but getting much closer). At the same time, the huge expansion in the numbers going to university has meant that the chances of a degree leading to graduate-level employment have fallen sharply.

The perception now is that if you want to go from university into a "good" job, then you need either a science degree, or an arts degree from one of the elite institutions (Oxford, Cambridge, or one of the other top 10 or so universities). A decade ago, studying a "silly" degree for three years could be justified, from the point of view of an 18 year old, on the basis that it meant you got three years of the student lifestyle. If you didn't get a graduate-level job at the end of it, then at least it hadn't cost you all that much. This has changed now (and in a funny way, this is probably a good thing).

Whether the conventional wisdom will actually prove correct for students starting undergraduate degrees in September this year, I don't know. I suspect a maths degree will always make you more employable than a media studies one, but there's no reason to suspect that any portion of the graduate jobs market is immune to over-saturation.

As tends to get pointed out quite frequently, what we lack in the UK (and have lacked for decades now) is a network of decent technical colleges to prepare people for skilled non-academic jobs.

Yes, this is likely related to the economy and changing attitudes about education.

Some of these attitudes are becoming a bit extreme though. I've noticed snobbery and contempt for people who don't specialize in math or science. It may ultimately lead to a sense of entitlement for these science and math majors that goes unsatisfied. Already in the post-doc world and in academia we see signs of saturation. And the salaries in these fields aren't high enough to indicate dramatic unmet demand.

Thank XXXX for that. So many A-Levels these days are in ridiculous subjects, thankfully the trend AWAY from Maths and Science is coming to an end.

In the UK the government went with a target (set on a EU level) of having 50% of the population in higher education (not realising the vocational side of things that is common in other European countries such as Germany that count towards this goal).

You end up with half the population with a degree is a useless subject and unemployable as you are "overqualified" for roles that do not require a degree.

You might not end up using Maths in your day to day job, but the logical mentality that it encourages is very useful in other aspects of life - even simple things like managing your budget.

We don't need thousands of Media Studies graduates with huge debt, we need Scientists, Entrepreneurs and many other roles that are currently being filled by imported labour. I can't remember the last time I saw an English plumber or electrician - those skills are needed here and the pay for those roles is ridiculously high in the UK compared to other countries (I know a plumber who makes the equivalent of USD 200k a year 5 years after getting his qualifications).

My younger sister, and some of my friends who were just starting university when I was just finishing, have science degrees from good (in several cases very good) universities, and are struggling to find appropriate jobs.

One has a degree in Biochemistry from Imperial, and was told last month by the Jobcentre staff that she'd have a better chance finding a job if she removed it from her CV! (She's had a succession of temporary jobs, boring office work etc, all with the promise of a permanent position at a later date, but that always seems to go to the less-qualified person who the company presumably assume will stick around for longer).

My sister found a job doing data entry for a company in her field (bio-somethingorother), hoping that would lead somewhere, but it hasn't.

I think there seem to be better opportunities elsewhere in the EEA, but people seem unwilling to move. I can understand that a little, but at 21 I thought it would be great to go and live in another country (I applied for a couple, but was offered a job in the UK within days of starting to look anyway).

Meanwhile, the place I work struggles to find computer science graduates, as we don't pay anywhere near enough to compete with the City, so we have to find idealists who really want to work for a charity, and they're rare.

I think there seem to be better opportunities elsewhere in the EEA, but people seem unwilling to move.

Lack of personal mobility has been cited as one of, if not the most important, factor in regional and youth unemployment. I have a number of old friends and acquaintances who relocated to find work - usually to a large city within the same country, but sometimes further afield, to other continents, EU to/from US, to places like Dubai, Sri Lanka, Amsterdam, Germany etc. There are immigrants to the U.S. and U.K. who have left their friends and families, travelled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles, in sear

Be it for employment or progression (rate of promotion has dropped off substantially in recent years for obvious reasons).

My brother is moving to Singapore in a few weeks - internal promotion at his firm.

I am currently considering a few roles in Moscow, HK and Singapore which would be financially much, much better than my current position - sometimes you need to take a risk and leave the comfortable (and repetitive) behind.

There's some problems with this. When you relocate far away like that, you lose your entire social support network: family, friends, etc. You're not even in your own culture any more, you're in an alien culture, so it's quite hard to make any new friends, and you can forget about having a marriage, kids, etc. What exactly is the draw for this? A big salary? A prestigious job? Science and engineering jobs don't pay that well. They're better than the average, at least until age discrimination hits at 4

I live in London, so I know loads of people who've relocated -- many semi/unskilled young people from Southern or Eastern Europe, but also plenty of skilled workers from Northern and Western Europe, and transient workers from Australia, NZ, SA etc. Half the people I meet aren't British. Some Swedish friends told me last night that London is the fourth-largest city by Swedish population.

I haven't checked any statistics, but I wouldn't be surprised if British people are some of the least mobile in the EU.

(FWIW, my sister/friends etc have probably been on benefits for less than six months between them. They can get unskilled temporary jobs in offices easily enough (and do so).)

The government should, as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits, require people located in areas of high unemployment to relocate if there are appropriate jobs elsewhere.

Agreed. Wasn't the whole point of Jobseeker's allowance to fund things like train travel to job interviews? (I could be wrong, I never needed to sign on.)

5th city of france as well. Yesterday was at a barbecue in Sevenoaks (small commuter town, traditionally very, very English) - the people present were...

SwedishPolishGermanJapaneseRussian

London and the surrounding area has become a very international place (always was, but has become much more so in recent decades.

Jobseeker's allowance is meant to fund those things as well, but try taking a train from, say, Yorkshire to London for an interview at short notice - you wouldn't be able to afford the ticket.

Think free travel to interviews is something that should be looked into. Jobseekers allowance just about covers food. Though housing allowance, exemption from council tax, etc... are very generous.

I think you're right on the British being the least mobile, major limitation is that English is taught very widely abroad, but the British rarely learn any foreign languages beyond a basic level and the typical language learned is French, which isn't very useful. German, Spanish, Mandarin - those would be good.

If a job seeker is getting interviews they are doing, sucessfully, what is expected of them. It is plainly stupid to block them getting a job, stop needing benefit and start paying tax to save a few tens of quid on a travel expenses.

I'd agree the economy should be one component, but also the U.K. has been making the A levels easier and easier. I've found that U.K. math majors were amongst the weakest math students I've ever taught. And so so many unqualified MSc students doing mathematics.

We don't need thousands of Media Studies graduates with huge debt, we need Scientists, Entrepreneurs and many other roles that are currently being filled by imported labour.

The problem is that 17 year olds generally have no idea what skills are in demand in the workplace. Perhaps every university should be required to write a letter to each prospective student, informing them of the ratio of graduates from that university with that particular degree in the last 5 years who are employed/unemployed, and the median salary. The letter could also point out similar degrees with better prospects. That way student choice would be retained, but it would be more informed. Alternatively

My parents were very supportive (thankfully) - offered me a variety of choices, and got me SERIOUSLY thinking about my future at a very early age.

It needs to go beyond "what do you want to be when you grow up?" when the kid's barely able to understand what that means. It means thinking about what the best risk/reward would be. Balancing the cost of a dergree against potential earnings. Things like quality of life also need to be factored in.

I completely disagree about parents. Unless your parents are in your field of interest, they don't have a fucking clue about what fields are good and which aren't. If your parents are not college-educated, it's even worse. I'm an embedded software engineer; my mom is always encouraging me to apply to jobs I have zero experience in, just because they involve computers in some way. She thinks I can do anything that has anything remotely to do with computers.

Perhaps every university should be required to write a letter to each prospective student, informing them of the ratio of graduates from that university with that particular degree in the last 5 years who are employed/unemployed, and the median salary

University league tables have this information. When I was looking at universities over a decade ago they showed both the average salary of graduates and the percentage that had a job within a year of graduating. This information is still published.

Perhaps every university should be required to write a letter to each prospective student, informing them of the ratio of graduates from that university with that particular degree in the last 5 years who are employed/unemployed, and the median salary.

What? A personalized letter? Delivered by the mail? I'm pretty sure there's a more efficient and affordable method of disseminating information.

hence the point about teaching students fundamental computing principles rather than how to use whatever technology is currently in use.

A lot of students came out of University knowing C, when the industry moved to Java. Then they came out knowing Java, when the industry had moved on to C#. Now students might be coming out knowing C# when Microsoft is moving back to C++. This is what happens if you let the short-term minds of our industry try to influence how students are taught.

We need all of those media people, too. The UK entertainment industry is as big a contributor to the economy as finance is, and tourism -- which, frankly is all about media -- is a decent chunk of the economy too. Just because it's a sector of the economy that appeals to geeks (except when it's making superhero or sci-fi movies) but it certainly matters to the accountants.

Yes, this is likely related to the economy and changing attitudes about education.

I'd argue there is an even simpler explanation - popular culture has shifted. Reality TV and the "media studies" degrees it fuelled are no longer cool. Instead, the people who appear on reality TV shows are increasingly seen as losers; the new cool is startups and app stores, the young crowd hear stories of the people who became app store millionaires in 6 months, and dream of being the next Zuckerberg. I predict that this new wave of enthusiasm for computing won't last; we saw this cycle before with the .

There aren't merely "signs of saturation" in academia. Academia was already fully saturated in the mid 70s. We've actually been shrinking the academic job market for the last decade using adjuncts.

In fact, we've recently started shrinking it by creating really good online courses. There are open courseware guys at MIT who suggest there should only be 6 real universities within 20 years. In other words, all professors not at elite institutions like MIT and Stanford should become TAs who help the students

Whether the conventional wisdom will actually prove correct for students starting undergraduate degrees in September this year, I don't know. I suspect a maths degree will always make you more employable than a media studies one, but there's no reason to suspect that any portion of the graduate jobs market is immune to over-saturation.

I think the falacy in the conventional wisdom is that somehow a university education is sufficient to prepare an arbitrary student for a graduate-level job at the end. In my opinion, some people just have an affinity towards math and science (similar to affinity that some folks have to the arts, or others have for business) that makes it an intangible element that makes all the difference that no university education can create.

Somehow I doubt a large increase in enrollment is reflective of an equivalently

You provide a possible explanation - I am sure there's some truth in the belief that students are more discerning now it costs much more to study. However the IOP and others have provided some evidence for their argument [stimulatingphysics.org] so we should at least consider it. Definitely it would be interesting to hear if you've come across research into students' attitudes towards their choice of university courses.

I think there's probably quite a simple explanation for this. The amount of debt that students in England and Wales will likely need to take on (barring rich parents) to pay for a degree has risen significantly from this year (not quite at US levels yet, but getting much closer).

I've read that many potential students don't understand one very important difference between the American-style student debt and the English/Welsh version: in England/Wales the interest rate is low, and you don't have to pay back the debt until you earn over a certain amount (£15.7k), and the repayment amount is fixed (9% of income over £15.7k). The debt doesn't count on a credit score either.

I do hope they can keep improving. Demand for skilled workers, especially in the USA, is still outstripping supply and this is a good first step in helping to rectify the situation.(Yeah, I know that this report is from the UK and I wrote "especially in USA" but US companies can, will and already do import talent from outside of the USA.)

There are many reasons which may have conflated to produce this result. I moved out of research 20 years ago and have been teaching physics in UK schools ever since, so I have seen various trends during that time.

Physics has always been perceived as hard (especially by girls) and considered geeky. Most of my students have either been out-and-out geeks or those aspiring to medicine/dentistry. A few have shifted into numerate careers (e.g. actuary, accountancy) and several into teaching.

Mostly pupils are interested in the sexier aspects - astrophysics or relativity or quantum theory, rather than mechanics or thermodynamics. Of course, at school level the really hard stuff doesn't kick in but it is still quite challenging for the vast majority of students.

A few years ago maths at A-level in the UK was made significantly easier (this is well-documented elsewhere) and took a lot of students who were considering doing physics as a "hard" option in order to go to medical school. To some extent this is still the case, but more people are doing physics as well. Why?

The courses feeding into A-level have been made easier - this gives people the [misleading] impression that they can cope with physics - and increases the course drop-out rate! Also, it is very valuable for entry on to competitive courses in good universities, but only if you get the top grades. Finally - and perhaps most importantly - it is seen as interesting, thanks to the influence of ambassadors such as Brian Cox (who has over 0.75 million followers on Twitter) and the well-reported recent events at CERN.

It will be fascinating to see how this develops - will the courses be "dumbed-down" (probably not, in the current political and economic climate). Will people realise that physicists are not necessarily directly employable? (I currently know two Ph.D.s who are still working as painters and decorators, several years on). Will the love affair with media science die away? (Again - it was last seen during the Moon landings and yours truly got sucked in as a boy...)

A-Level is still a bit simplistic (even Further Maths) - you get some basic proofs of calculus, but thats about it (the course is actually quite varied so it depends on what Modules you take - you need to do a minimum amound of "Pure"/Core and then either Statistics or Mechanics).

Mechanics is more applied maths within Physics and Stats is, well, stats...

At my school there was a lot of focus on that well beyond the syllabus, the teachers were young and loved the subject, enthusiasm is contagious. Went off

From banking, construction, engineering, ICT, essentially all technology, anything to do with numbers or handling data, anything to do with statistics, anything to do with problem solving. Every single field I've drifted into have found my skills invaluable.

Don't think Fermi could have been useful other than a physicist? Newton seemed to earn money doing numerous other jobs, as have many other physicists.

Newton seemed to earn money doing numerous other jobs, as have many other physicists.

Indeed - perhaps I wasn't clear. Anyone seeking work straight from University should have an edge. There are still some prejudices out there (e.g. "Physicists can't write and don't have social skills) but the numeracy/problem-solving card usually trumps those. Having said that, those who start on a "physics" career may find it harder to change direction later. They often seem to end up in a series of short-term posts (be

Sadly I can't agree. It's not "important" as lots of people seem to get by, some even do well with very little science or maths. Lots of people have fantastic mental arithmetic; but never use it beyond a game of darts or gambling.
It should be important in our everyday lives. I can't disagree with that. If people had an understanding of what science strives for, when they read bullshit news paper lies they'd question the print.

Last year, many accredited the success to cultural influences, such as the “Brian Cox effect”.

New data, however, suggest a network designed to help science teachers inspire students with the wonder of physics, called the Stimulating Physics Network (SPN) [stimulatingphysics.org], has played a major part in translating this nascent inspiration into A-level entries.

A growing fascination with science and teacher support schemes seem to be improving the teaching of maths and physics in UK state schools.

Initiatives are nice, but I suspect the students are drawn to physics in particular because they see billions on dollars/pounds being spend on the LHC and either thinks it's cool and want to understand whats really going on there, or they see the money. Others will not the rise in interest at the time of their "initiative" and say they caused it. Seems like a survey of t

As a physics teacher in a standard comprehensive school in the UK, I've seen a massive rise in students choosing physics in maths recently. A few years ago very few were choosing it as it was so much harder that 'travel and tourism' or sociology and got effectively the same qualification. The schools also promoted easier courses as it massively bumped up their pass figures. Whereas now, with the changing job climate, lots of them are realising that not all A-levels were created equally and their job prospec